Gender

Kulima prides itself on taking a gender-sensitive approach to all its assignments.  Both Kulima directors have an academic background in gender: Katharine's PhD was on gendered vulnerability to climate change in Limpopo province, South Africa, and Tracy's honours thesis was on gender and local government in the city of Durban, South Africa.

We have been invited to give presentations on gender and climate change, and written a variety of publications around the importance of a gender-sensitive approach.  Tracy was an invited panelist for Innovations in Engendering Climate Finance at the 2012 CIF Partnership Forum in Istanbul, Turkey.  Katharine took particular responsibility for emphasising gender in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, and both Katharine and Tracy ensured that gender was highlighted in the rural areas chapter of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.  Katharine was invited to write a background paper for the 2011 Human Development Report on "Sustaining equitable progress: Gender equality in the context of a changing climate".

Particular projects that we have undertaken with a gender focus include:

2013-2014

Engendering disaster risk reduction in Mozambique

Kulima Integrated Development Solutions has been chosen by CAREMozambique as an implementing partner in a BMZ-funded project on engendering disaster risk reduction.  Running until 2014, the project will develop new gender-sensitive vulnerability assessment methodologies and train personnel to facilitate their use in participatory vulnerability assessments in Homoine and Angoche districts.  After field testing, refinements will be made and the final gender-sensitive toolkit will be used to advocate for gender-sensitive disaster risk reduction.  Further training will also be conducted with national and local level government and civil society members in the hopes that gender-sensitive vulnerability approaches become standard in the future.

2012

Training of WWF and Kenya Wildlife Service staff to undertake Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (CVCA)

Kulima was commissioned to train staff from WWF Tanzania and Kenya Wildlife Service to undertake a CVCAs, with a particular view to an initial CVCA in the Lamu seascape and Tana landscape.  The training course comprised 3 days of classroom training looking at the opportunities for vulnerability assessment and tools within the CVCA, together with how to design research questions and select tools to collect the required data.  A particular focus was placed on the need for gender sensitivity and disaggregating the research and findings by gender.  A further 2 days of training took place in the field, where participants had the opportunity to conduct their own participatory qualitative research, under supervision, and be mentored in how to analyse and report on data gathered.

2011 

Gender, climate change, food security and agriculture – Training of trainers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains

Kulima was commissioned by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security programme of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to design and run a training of trainers programme on gender, climate change, food security and agriculture.  Potential trainers from India, Sri Lanka and Nepal attended the event, learning content on projected climate change in South Asia, its (gender-differentiated) impacts and adaptation options, as well as techniques to communicate this information to rural women farmers and village leaders.  The manual provided to all participants is available online, as are photos from the training of trainers event.  Katharine and Tracy ran the training of trainers in New Delhi, and then oversaw the first training course led by the newly-trained trainers in the Punjab. The ultimate aim is to empower women at the grassroots to understand that they are able to make choices that enable adaptation to climate change but require little financial or technological investment, and feedback from the first training was very positive.

2010

Gender, climate change and community-based adaptation: A guidebook for designing and implementing gender-sensitive community-based adaptation projects and programmes

This "how to" guidebook was produced for UNDP’s Environment and Energy Group, as part of the UNDP-GEF Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) Programme.  By taking the project cycle as the point of reference, the guidebook highlights opportunities for integrating gender, together with examples of good practice from the 10 pilot countries in the CBA programme.